I turned 65 recently and my wife and I had a heart to heart.
We both know I'm not going to work forever.
We both know we need to think about how much money we'll have when I stop working when I turn 70 and what I can do to maximize that.
Once we created this goal, this objective, this life clarifying decision, all of a sudden things became clearer.
I found a couple quotes that helped me make better decisions:
If you don't separate yourself from your distractions, Your distractions will separate you from your goals and the life you want. ~ Louisa Alcott
Always ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow. ~ Coelho
So since my objective was to work till I'm 70 my thought was, 'OK I've got to do the absolute best job I can do so that I'll remain employed. All of a sudden a lot of things started coming up to mind.
One of the great things about this kind of thinking is now I had a crystal clear measuring stick to determine if I should be doing something or not.
All of a sudden, I realized,
> I better go to bed at 8 every night and since I like to read before closing my eyes, I better set a timer for 60 minutes so I don't shortchange myself from the sleep I need to have a productive day.
> That Instagram account is not that important and I don't need to be so active on LinkedIn.
> As much as I care about my local town council, sometimes I've got to realize I cannot do everything.
Nor do I need clutter my mind with things, like
> Why that local restaurant closed and reopened.
> Politics. I voted and mailed some post cards but that's all I can do. This year they voted out the guys in power and four years from now the same pattern will probably repeat itself.
> Listening to endless TV and spending more than 30 minutes on Facebook.
How about you? Do you have a goal that is so important its worth stopping other things so you can actually achieve that goal?
The only way you can answer that question is by deciding how important that one thing is.
I hope you found this article enlightening, invigorating and clarifying.